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- EXreaction, on 10/12/2007, -6/+54Not completely true. IBM is not using Playstation's processor at all. The Cell processor was made by IBM, Toshiba, and Sony together. Each company can use it for themselves, so it is in no way "Playstation's Chip", Sony just decided to throw the Cell in the PS3.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+45Its oh so common to find PS3 and "flop" in digg articles nowadays :-)
- DaveDaveson, on 10/12/2007, -5/+41Yes but will it run Doom?
- titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -11/+40Will it ship with HDMI cables?
- bodger, on 10/12/2007, -2/+28On the face of it, IBM's new super computer 'Roadrunner' may seem expensive with the first phase costing $35 million, but if you allow for the fact that it's also a Blue Ray player, it's really quite the bargain.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26Lose.
- mkaufman, on 10/12/2007, -10/+28Oh noes.... A technology used by the PS3 AND by AMD? What will a fanboy do now?
- titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -4/+21Without a video card?
- thedak, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18you hear that whooshing sound? That's the sound of his joke going right over your head.
- arunforce, on 10/12/2007, -10/+24Actually, Sony enlisted the others to help them.
They were designing it for the PS3, but it was viable enough for outside the PS3 usage frame.
If it wasn't for Sony, it wouldn't have been made.
Take your fanboy ***** somewhere else. - titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -6/+20But it can cure cancer!
- fauxXenophanes, on 10/12/2007, -8/+19Doesn't this trial-balloon get floated before every Playstation release? " Playstation too powerful to be shipped overseas....." How about a new PR firm for Sony?
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11"Im sorry, was the point of the article to make you excited for the PS3?"
First thing I thought when I read it was, "Wow, Sony couldn't ask for better advertising".
What fanboy *wouldn't* like to be able that their console uses a supercomputer class processor? - EXreaction, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10titlesayitall, I hope you are not trying to be serious...
If you are you might want to find out what is really in there...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_%28processor%29 - sigma419, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I'm pretty sure he was joking.
- uptown, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11True story ... I was eating dinner in NY last night, sitting outside, and I see a guy get out of a Jaguar being driven by his driver. He starts walking away, turns back, take off his tie, hands it to the driver, then head off. I recognize him as Sony's Chairman and CEO, Howard Stringer. It took all my strength to not ask him what the heck he's thinking with the PS3. Pretty cool sighting though.
- Leo55, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7can't you guys take a joke?
Hell, and i thought the people at slashdot was cranky. - mpancha, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10So the mass media misinformation can begin? ...
PS3 uses a type of cell processor
IBM uses a type of cell processor
therefor IBM is using PS3's chip?
I drive a Honda car...
My neighbor drives a Toyota car...
Therefore my neighbor drives a Honda....
Logic for Dummies, at your local Barnes and Nobles today! - Kelmon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Funny, I was immediately wondering if it will be running Linux as well...
- Cone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"A technology used by the PS3 AND by AMD?"
It's not being used by AMD, it's being added to a computer that currently uses AMD chips.
Read the story before you post stupid comments. :) - EXreaction, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Actually, I would argue that the Cell can be used for anything pretty well(atleast from my understanding on it).
It is actually designed to be able to easily do many of the things you need done in a game, and has huge potential. It just needs a good programmer to code the games correctly(very hard to do).
Sony and IBM could put this in the desktop arena pretty easily if they would like to, and I believe that IBM has some workstation class pc's in the works that will have the Cell in them as well. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11roflolcopter
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+15Im sorry, was the point of the article to make you excited for the PS3?
GTFO - tapo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Well, to be perfectly honest, Xbox emulators *have* been developed. Notibly, the PC port of Halo was mostly just a wrapper around the Xbox specific API calls (which is why the Mac port was delayed and performance was so poor). There are also attempts at an Xbox emulator, with varying degrees of success. The majority of issues stem from the fact that Xbox's DirectX 8 implementation is much, much different from Windows.
The Xbox 360's Xenon chip is kind of like a 'cell lite', still being based around the PowerPC architecture, but not as much of a radical design change as the cell. The Xenon is, from memory, three symmetric PPC cores on one die. The original Xbox 360 dev kits were Power Mac G5s running a version of Windows for PPC. I'd believe if you could reverse engineer DirectX and the 360's binary format (PE based?) then you could make an emulator for the Quad-core G5s.
With the Playstation 3, OpenGL 2.0 is used*, making reverse engineering not a problem. The operating system is Linux, and many other components are also based off of open standards (which is why I give the PS3 some credit). So, to be perfectly honest, a PS3 emulator for a Cell-based workstation wouldn't be that hard to put together. Granted, you'd need a blu-ray drive and do some hacking and reverse engineering to pull it off, but it actually is possible - and highly likely that we'll see one if anyone really cares enough.
My footnote on OpenGL:
*More or less, although it uses Nvidia shaders and doesn't support the full suite, technically making it es 1.1 - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5It's a shame but Sony's US branch doesn't have alot of power within the greater behemoth that is Sony. Kutaragi and crew are the ones holding the ropes.
- wirelesshnic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4More on the Super Computer
http://www.digg.com/world_news/Fastest_supercomputer_to_be_built_2 - merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Just as soon as you can play Xbox games on your PC.
Hey, they both use intel processors, right? - musicmantrs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3There is no telling when they began developing this, the Conroe processor may have been announced but was not available at the time... thats simply speculation. A future version will probably use the new Intels.
- OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You can buy your own Cell blade here:
http://www.mc.com/cell/
There's also PCIe coprocessor card version. - Thmstec, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3(@ merreborn)The Xbox 360 doesn't use Intel at all.... It uses PPC cores, 3 of them + ATI's graphics chip.
And for all you who are thinking that the Cell and the Xbox360 processor are similar, they are in one way. The Cell Uses one general purpose processor and 8 SPEs (simpler processors) (7 active for the PS3), while the Xbox360 uses 3 general purpose processors (PPCs) that are, for the sake of comparison, just like the Cell's single [PPC]. - OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Sony's Chairman and CEO, Howard Stringer. It took all my strength to not ask him what the heck he's thinking with the PS3."
You're lucky you didn't. His ninja assassin bodyguard/driver would have beaten you to a pulp. - samfrench, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3they will never be able to do that
- metalstorm, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5@kitchenni
Not entirely true, the one I am working is going to dual boot. Microsoft is trying to get their software running on more clusters in recent years. Also, if you use an enterprise version of linux its not that much cheaper. Don't get me wrong, I would much much much rather use linux over Windows, but what can you do. - VSKBadCRC, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4"What fanboy *wouldn't* like to be able that their console uses a supercomputer class processor?"
Sony fanboys, that's who. But I have to say though, anyone else remember the whole 3Dfx campaign on TV? (You know, the campaign that preceded their failure - ironic...)
We've got a chip that perform 100 billion operations per second... We could use it to cure cancer, to feed the poor, genetically alter ... everything... Nah, let's use it for video games instead.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9097376684805873187&q=3Dfx
I'm sorry Timmy, we really were going to genetically clone you a new liver using this unnecessarily over-powered Cell processor, but because PS3 launch numbers were halved due to low part yields, we're going to have to use *this* processor for video games too.
Ken Kutaragi: Yoink! - metalstorm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I was thinking the same thing. I went to a tech speech about Cell a year or so before they started production and the PS3 is just a way to bring up sales and bring down price of the processor. Otherwise it would just end up like the other RISC machines, fast but way too expensive. They had plenty of other plans in store for Cell.
Now on the other hand, will this even be a useful supercomputer or will it end up being like big blue gene? Has a lot of power but very difficult to utilize it. - VSKBadCRC, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It's finally living up to the hype from it's original launch: this terrorist weapon is powered by the Cell Processor. Imagine the possibilities.
- Giever, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@ EXreaction
But, although it is very powerful if utilized correctly, the fact that it's so hard to program for makes it a bad idea for a console. Think about the combination between, somewhat less buyers to begin with due to the high price, and that, at least in the first year or so they'll probably have less games than both of their other launches, also, it will probably take quite awhile for developers to actually be able to use the processor to its full potential, though even without putting it to the test, it still seems quite capable in videos, etc. This is all in my opinion, of course. - ahatter, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5I think its more like sony uses IBMs chip.
- noouch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Linux? Wouldn't they run IBM AX on it, it being IBM's own blend of UNIX?
- MrObjectional, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I know a guy over here at RTP in Raleigh (Cluster Enablement IBM Systems & Technology Group) and he had a number of interesting things to say.
1. It is still fed by a PowerPC core (just like the PS3- the Cell is not a general purpose processor.)
2. The Cells going in the later shipments are going to be much more useful than those in the initial (I couldn't follow exactly what he said- something about 128bit precision vs 24.)
3. This has been in devlopment since April.
4. Sort of off topic, he mentioned that IBM is throwing its weight behind Cell, and that the money going to Cell (and not to Mac processors) was one of the reasons Apple jumped over to a more competitive architecture.
5. He seemed skeptical of it reaching the petaflop asked for.
6. Finally I asked him if hardware level support was difficult to develop on the Cell and he replied, "More than Difficult." - kitchenni, on 10/12/2007, -7/+8it will be running linux. practically all new clusters do. because linux is the most efficient and cheapest
- airencracken, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1PS3 != Cell
- OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Lots of supercomputers use intel processors, just like the Xbox 360.
Should we make the same argument about the Xbox then?"
I think Informationweek is gaming Digg with these titles. They've realized the same thing that the submitters have: Put some fanboy buzzwords in the title and you get instant Diggs.
If an accurate title was used, something like "IBM Developing Hybrid Cell-AMD Supercomputer" 75% of the Diggers who Dugg this "PS3" story would have never done so.
Although, AMD is a fanboy buzzword too. But AMD + PS3 with !!!SUPERCOMPUTER!!! on top? You've hit the jackpot! - JimXugle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@OBKenobi
I was thinking of buying a PS3 so I could use it for Password "recovery"... now I can just use the add in card!
No price listed... maybe the PS3 will be cheaper...
nah - headband, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1woodcrest is good for 2 and even 4 way workstations, but once you get beyond that you start to see the limitations of the front side bus and benifits of hypertransport
- QuimZ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Kind of along the lines of the PS2 rumor articles
The ONLY shame in this whole matter is that we caught Saddam and they can't claim he's ordering these to launch advanced missiles and control strategic warfare, like the GamePro or related magazine article did in '99/'00
Now that I think about it, I'm not sure what mag it was in, but there are enough gamers around to correct me. - NikoKun, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Maybe so, but Sony should have made a processor, specific for their console's architecture... Not a processor to be used for everything... -_-
A console with a processor built just for that console only, has a lot more potential power, than one with an all purpose processor.
That was my point, even if I said it in shorter words... -_- I wish people wouldn't digg down so damn easilly... - JimXugle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I digg, but the title was misleading... I thought it was the EmotionEngine Chip they were using.
PlayStation 3 != PlayStation - OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2"Doesn't this trial-balloon get floated before every Playstation release? " Playstation too powerful to be shipped overseas....." How about a new PR firm for Sony?"
The PS3 is too powerful for Sony to build. - whiteguysamurai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The cell sucks, bigtime.
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